On April 20, 2015 all 48 of the best that we could find issues of Softalk magazine were brought to the Internet Archive Regional Scanning Center in Fort Wayne Indiana for ingestion into the Internet Archive via The Softalk Apple Project. It was an amazing afternoon!

The Softalk Apple Project and FactMiners.org are very pleased to announce our partnership with the Internet Archive which will dramatically accelerate the digitization, preservation, and public access to an archival-quality digital collection of the full 48-issue run of the Apple edition of Softalk magazine.

As part of our commitment to support research collaborations, we are very happy to announce The Softalk Apple Project 2014 Researcher of the Year Award recipients; Chris Torrance, Laine Nooney, and Kevin Driscoll. The recipients of this inaugural year of our Researcher award are especially noteworthy as they have been trailblazers in our effort to establish The Softalk Apple Project as a vital, grassroots (unaffiliated and so-far unfunded) Citizen Science/History project.

For all of you Assembly Lines fans out there, STAP's multi-award winning Chris Torrence recently posted this excellent YouTube video showcasing the new book, Assembly Lines: The Complete Book, the first in his series of Assembly Lines videos. To date he has posted three videos. The first of his videos is reposted here. It provides an overview of the table of contents with general information about the book itself and where you can get it.

As we wrap up the first full year of The Softalk Apple Project (STAP), Timlynn and I are pleased to report our progress. While nearly everything done during the first year of activity has contributed in its own small way to moving our projects toward sustainability, two areas are especially noteworthy; our Volunteer activity and our Research "Honeypot" initiative. Here we are happy to acknowledge and celebrate the efforts of our volunteers.

We invite you to view the "Lively Talkin' Slide" Edition of our recent presentation about The Softalk Apple Project and our related FactMiners project at #MCN2014, the premiere museum informatics conference. We again thank the Museum Computer Network Association and PICTION for sponsoring our Emerging Professional scholarship that enabled Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky to attend the conference to learn, network with Kindred Spirits, and make our presentation to the museum informatics community. The opportunity for growth of both our projects was phemonenal and will be a source of enthusiasm for our continued evolution of these grassroots Citizen Science/History projects.

We are extremely pleased to announce that Henry Lowood, Curator of the History of Technology and Film & Media Collections of Stanford Libraries, has joined the Softalk Apple Project (STAP) Advisory Board.

"As a grassroots community project, Henry's deep and broad knowledge of museum informatics and the requirements for digital collections preservation and management will be invaluable," said Jim Salmons, a founding organizer of the project and tech lead on the FactMiners sub-project, "In addition, his personal deep interest and activity in preserving and exploring the evolution of computer games is a big plus as we evolve the FactMiners social-game ecosystem as an innovative way to document and explore cultural heritiage digital collections."

The Softalk Apple Project is extraordinarily pleased and proud to announce our first members of the project's Advisory Board. They are Steven Weyhrich, John Gruver, and Mike Moshell. Their individual and collective insights and interest in this project will be invaluable to our mission to preserve, explore, and extend the legacy of Softalk magazine.